Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
by surajksingh · 59 things on Twos
- To allow ourselves to be truly in touch with where we already are, no matter where that is, we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in; to see it in its fullness, to hold it in awareness and thereby come to know and understand it better. Only then can we accept the truth of this moment of our life, learn from it, and move on. Instead, it often seems as if we are preoccupied with the past, and it’s what has already happened, or with a future that hasn’t arrived yet
- We are only partially aware at best of exactly what we are doing in and with our lives, and the effects our actions and, more subtly, our thoughts have on what we see and don’t see, what we do and don’t do
- We usually fall, quite unaware, into assuming that what we are thinking—the ideas and opinions that we harbor at any given time—are “the truth” about what is “out there” in the world and “in here” in our minds. Most of the time, it just isn’t so
- We lock ourselves into a personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are and where we are going, that we know what is happening—all the while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies, and impulses, mostly about the past and about the future, about what we want and like, and what we fear and don’t like
- Being in touch with not knowing is called mindfulness
- Wisdom is seeing more deeply into cause and effect and the interconnectedness of things, so that we are no longer caught in a dream dictated reality of our own creation
- What happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next
- From time to time, look around a bit, be in touch with what is happening now, so that you can take your inner and outer bearings and perceive with clarity the path that you are actually on and the direction in which you are going. If you do so, maybe you will be in a better position to chart a course for yourself that is truer to your inner being. If not, the sheer momentum of your unconsciousness in this moment just colors the next moment. The days, months, and years quickly go by unnoticed, unused, unappreciated
- Wake up and realize that how we think life is to be lived and what is important is at best unexamined half-truths based on fear or ignorance, our own life-limiting ideas, and not the truth or the way life has to be at all
- Mindfulness means paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally
- Our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation
- Buddhism is fundamentally about being in touch with your own deepest nature and letting it flow out of you unimpeded
- Be with yourself. Watch yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge
- Don’t try to change anything at all, just breathe and let go
- Move in the direction your health tells you to go, mindfully and with resolution
- Are you seeing people or seeing your thoughts about them?
- Go and sit or meditate lying down. Let this or any time you practice be your time for letting go of all doing, for shifting into the being mode, in which you simply dwell in stillness and mindfulness, attending to the moment-to-moment unfolding of the present, adding nothing, subtracting nothing, affirming that “This is it.”
- The deep importance of contemplation and of non-attachment to any result other than the sheer enjoyment of being
- The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not. Otherwise, self involvement and greediness can sneak in and distort your relationship to the work, or the work itself, so that it is off in some way, biased, impure, and ultimately not completely satisfying, even if it is good
- Work at allowing more things to appear in your life without wanting them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don’t fit your idea of what “should” be happening
- Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help, it can create a great deal of suffering—sometimes in us, sometimes in those who have to be around us
- Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as “good” or “bad”
- Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may
- Our thinking can prevent us from seeing clearly in the present moment
- Somewhere deep within us resides a profoundly healthy and trustworthy core, and that our intuitions, as deep resonances of the actuality of the present moment, are worthy of our trust
- Throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are
- “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again”
- Why do you meditate or why do you want to meditate?
- What do you honor most in life?
- What is your vision, your map for where you are going? Does this vision reflect my true values and intentions? Do I practice my intentions? How am I now in my job, in my family, in my relationships, with myself? How do I want to be?
- It is useful at times to admit to yourself that you don’t know your way and to be open to help from unexpected places
- You cannot imitate somebody else’s journey and still be true to yourself
- Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself
- Our happiness, satisfaction, and our understanding will be no deeper than our capacity to know ourselves inwardly, to encounter the outer world from the deep comfort that comes from being at home in one’s own skin, from an intimate familiarity with the ways of one’s own mind and body
- Dwelling in stillness and looking inward for some part of each day, we touch what is most real and reliable in ourselves and most easily overlooked and underdeveloped
- The master travels all day without leaving home. If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root. If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are
- Just sit. Reside at the center of the world. Let things be as they are
- Pay attention on purpose, non-judgementally
- Start by staying with your breath and you can expand your awareness to observe all the comings and going’s, the gyrations and machinations of your own thoughts and feelings, perceptions and impulses, body and mind
- Sit with dignity. Like a mountain
- We are overdeveloped outwardly and underdeveloped inwardly. Perhaps it is we who, for all our wealth, are living in poverty
- We watch television and submit ourselves to constant bombardment of sounds and images from minds other than our own
- Discipline provides a consultancy which is independent of what kind of a day you had yesterday and what kind of a day you anticipate today
- “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium though which we look… to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” - Thoreau
- Our esteem problems stem in large part from our thinking, colored by past experiences
- It is easier and less threatening to our sense of self to project our involvement in our problems onto other people and the environment than to attain clarity and understanding about what is troubling us
- Be willing to look at everything that comes up while you sit
- There is hardly an outward hurry. Only an inner one, usually driven by impatience and a mindless type of thinking, which varies from so subtle I have to listen carefully to detect it at all, to do dominant that almost nothing will deflect its momentum
- What is my job on the planet?
- What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?
- “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much of dare too much.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- If I can’t do anything useful, at least I would like to do as little harm as possible
- Why not try to live so as to cause as little damage and suffering as possible?
- “As long as you are trying your very best, there can be no question of failure.” - Mahatma Gandhi
- When you sit, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action. You quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away. That they are not you but just thinking, and that you do not have to be ruled by them
- “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.” - Albert Einstein
- What we call “the self” is really a construct of our own mind, and hardly a permanent one, either
- You are already somebody, no matter what
- If you stop trying to make yourself into more than you are out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier, and easier to live with